Investments: Analysis and Management

Introduction

Please note that this is a preliminary course description. The final version will be published in June 2026.

The analysis of investments pervades virtually every financial decision made, e.g., by private investors, professional fund managers, and corporations. What is the price of securities such as stock and bonds? How can you combine them to construct a satisfactory investment portfolio? How do you evaluate the performance of a trading strategy?

This course provides students with the centerpieces of modern investment analysis, e.g., Markowitz’s methodology to construct mean-variance optimal portfolios, the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), multifactor models, the efficient market hypothesis, and standard metrics of performance evaluation.

Course content

1. Risk vs. Return
2. Asset Allocation with Mean-Variance
3. Socially Responsible Investing
4. Capital Asset Pricing Model, Arbitrage Pricing Theory, and Multifactor Models
5. The Efficient Market Hypothesis and its empirical evidence
6. Evaluating Investment Performance
7. Macroeconomic and Industry Analysis
8. Equity Valuation using Price-Earnings Ratios
9. Bond Valuation and the Term Structure of Interest Rates
10. Managing Bond Portfolios